A Criminal Type
TO-DAY I am MAKing aN inno6£vation. as you mayalready have guessed, I am typlng this article myself Zz½lnstead of writing it, The idea is to save time and exvBKpense, also to demonstyap demonBTrike= =damn, to demonstratO that I can type /ust as well as any blessed girl 1f I give my mInd to iT”” Typlng while you compose is really extraoraordinarrily easy, though composing whilr you typE is more difficut. I rather think my typing style is going to be different froM my u6sual style, but Idaresay noone will mind that much. looking back i see that we made rather a hash of that awfuul wurd extraorordinnaryk? in the middle of a woRd like thaton N-e gets quite lost? 2hy do I keep putting questionmarks instead of fulstopSI wonder. Now you see i have put a fulllstop instead Of a question mark it nevvvver reins but it yours.
the typewriter to me has always been a mustery£? and even now that I have gained a perfect mastery over the machine in gront of me i have npt th3 faintest idea hoW it workss% &or instance why does the thingonthetop the klnd of overhead Wailway arrangement move along one pace afterr every word; I haVe exam aaa ined the mechanism from all points of view but there seeems to be noreason atall whyit shouould do t£is . damn that £, it keeps butting in: it is Just lik real life. then there are all kinds oF attractive devisesand levers andbuttons of which is amanvel in itself, and does somethI5g useful without lettin on how it does iT.
Forinstance on this machinE which is Ami/et a mijge7 imean a mi/dgt,made of alumium,, and very light sothat you caN CARRY it about on your £olidays (there is that £ again) and typeout your poems onthe Moon immmmediately, and there is onely one lot of keys for capITals and ordinay latters; when you want todoa Capital you press down a special key marked cap i mean CAP with the lefft hand and yo7 press down the letter withthe other, like that abcd, no, ABCDEFG . how jolly that looks . as a mattr of fact th is takes a little gettingintoas all the letters on the keys are printed incapitals so now and then one forgets topress downthe SPecial capit al key. not often, though. on the other hand onceone £as got it down and has written anice nam e in capitals like LLOYdgeORGE IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO REmemBER TO PUT IT DOWN AGAIN ANDTHE N YOU GET THIS SORT OF THING WHICH SPOILS THE LOOOK OF THE HOLE PAGE . or els insted of preSSing down the key marked CAP onepresses down the key m arked FIG and then instead of LLOYDGEORGE you find that you have written ½½96%:394:3. this is very dissheartening and £t is no wonder that typists are sooften sououred in ther youth.
Apart fromthat though the key marked FIG is rather fun , since you can rite such amusing things withit, things like % and @ and dear old & not to mention = and ¼ and ¾ and ! ! ! i find that inones ordinarry (i never get that word right) cor orresponden£c one doesnt use expressions like @@ and %%% nearly enough. typewriting gives you a new ideaof possibilities o fthe engli£h language; thE more i look at % the more beautiful it seems to Be: and like the simple flowers of england itis per£aps most beauti£ul when seeen in the masss, Look atit
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
% % % % % % % % % % % %
how would thatdo for a BAThrooM wallpaper? it could be produced verery cheaply and itcould be calld the CHERRYdesigN damn, imeant to put all that in capitals. iam afraid this articleis spoilt now but butt bUt curse . But perhaps the most excitingthing a£out this mac£ine is that you can by pressing alittle switch suddenly writein redor green instead of in black; I donvt understanh how £t is done butit is very jollY? busisisness men us e the device a gre t deal wen writing to their membersof PARLIAment, in order to emphasasise the pointin wich the in£ustice is worSe than anyone elses in£ustice . wen they come to WE ARE RUINED they burst out into red and wen they come to WE w WOULD remIND YOU tHAT ATtHE LAST E£ECTION yoU UNDERTOOk they burst into GReeN. thei r typists must enjoy doing those letters. with this arrang ment of corse one coul d do allkinds of capital wallpapers. for lnstance wat about a scheme of red £’s and black %’s and gReen &’s? this sort of thing
£ % £ % £ % £ % £ %
& £ & £ & £ & £ & £
£ % £ % £ % £ % £ %
& £ & £ & £ & £ & £
Manya poor man would be glad to £ave that in his parLour ratherthan wat he has got now. of corse, you wont be ab?e to apreciate the fulll bauty of the design since i underst and that the retched paper which is going to print this has no redink and no green inq either; so you must £ust immagine that the £’s are red and the &’s are green. it is extroarordinarry (wat a t errible-word!!!) how backward in MAny waYs these up-todate papers are wwww¼¼¼¼¼¼½=¾ now how did that happen i wond er; i was experimenting with the BACK SPACE key; if that is wat it is for i dont thinq i shall use it again. iI wonder if i am impriving at this½ sometimes i thinq i am and so metimes i thinq iam not. we have not had so many £’s lately but i notice that theere have been one or two misplaced q’s & icannot remember to write i in capital s there it goes again.
O curse the typewriter itself is not wolly giltless ½ike all mac&ines it has amind of it sown and is of like passsions with ourselves. i could put that into greek if only the machine was not so hopelessly MOdern. it’s chief failing is that it cannot write m’sdecently and instead of h it will keep putting that confounded £. as amatter of fact ithas been doing m’s rather better today butthat is only its cusssedusssedness and because i have been opening my shoul ders wenever we have come to an m; or should it be A m? who can tell; little peculiuliarities like making indifferent m’s are very important & w£en one is bying a typewriter one s£ould make careful enquiries about themc; because it is things of that sort wich so often give criminals away. there is notHing a detective likes so much as a type riter with an idiosxz an idioynq damit an idiotyncrasy. for instance if i commit a murder i s£ould not thinq of writing a litter about it with this of all typewriters becusa because that fool ofa £ would give me away at once I daresay scotland Yard have got specimens of my trypewriting locked up in some pigeon-hole allready. if they £avent they ought to; it ought to be part of my dosossier.